CableCARD™ devices (also known as PODs—Point Of Deployment modules) are designed for use in the US cable industry to provide conditional access functions to retail devices such as television set-top boxes, VCRs, PVRs, and television receivers. In Europe, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) conditional access modules (CAMs) similarly are used not only in cable, but also terrestrial and satellite applications. For purposes of this document, terminology for all such devices will be used interchangeably. The first generation of such devices was designed to accommodate a single stream of video data. Subsequently, in the US, the “OpenCable™ Specifications: Multi-Stream CableCARD™ Interface OC-SP-MC-IF-C01-050331” from CableLabs Corp. has been introduced to provide multi-stream capability for CableCARD™ devices. Briefly, the CableCARD™-Host interface specification defines the interface between a digital cable host device and the CableCARD™ device. The Multi-Stream CableCARD™ device (also called an “M-CARD”) is a second generation CableCARD™ device (single stream CableCARD™ devices are also called “S-CARDs”). A multi-tuner Host can pass multiple transport streams through an M-CARD device. The above document defines an M-CARD device that can support multiple transport streams. The M-CARD device described in the above document is backward compatible with single stream CableCARD™ devices as defined via [SCTE28], the Host-POD Interface Standard [OC-CC] and the POD Copy Protection System [SCTE41], and supports multiple program decryption from multiple transport streams. The above-referenced documents are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
The OCAP (OpenCable™ Applications Platform) specifies a mechanism for Java™ programs to run, for example, to implement functions such as an electronic program guide, Video-on-Demand (VOD), and Personal Video Recorder (PVR). However, it is noted that although Java™ is designed to be a language that can be written once and then ported to many different processing environments, the reality is quite different and many problems can be encountered when attempting to run Java™ code on multiple environments. For example, when Java™ code is generated and debugged in a first operational environment, it may not function properly in a second operational environment. Therefore, for OCAP to become widely accepted, the Java™ code should be functional on every platform on which it is to run. This conceivably means each set of code must be individually tested with each hardware platform from all manufacturers in order to assure that the code functions properly.
The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a specification for uncompressed, copy protected, digital video and audio. It supports enhanced or high definition video plus multiple audio channels, and for example, can provide a link between a source of A/V content and a display.
The OpenCable™ Unidirectional Receiver (OCUR) specification (OC-SP-OCUR-101-060109) describes a proposed host device that may be interoperable across cable systems used throughout North America. It wraps MPEG2 transport streams in Internet Protocol (IP) packets. Content is conditional access (CA) descrambled in the OCUR and re-encrypted using Digital Rights Management (DRM). Some copy protection technologies include Dynamic Feedback Arrangement Scrambling Technique (DFAST) used with POD copy protection in existing S-CARDs and M-CARDs, Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) used with IEEE1394, and High Bandwidth Content Protection (HDCP) used with High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). As of this writing, CableLabs has proposed the Downloadable Conditional Access System (DCAS) which seeks to eliminate the use of both S-CARDs and M-CARDs. DCAS will allow conditional access (CA) functionality, e.g. from MediaCipher™ from Motorola or PowerKey™ from Scientific Atlanta, to be downloaded from the cable headend to a security integrated circuit (IC) mounted on the motherboard of the receiver in a customer's home.